To Darkness and to Death

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  And what do you do with her after? the old Shaun asked. But the new Shaun, the one who was going to come out a winner in this debacle, was already figuring how he could get a vengeful, uncooperative Rapunzel out of her tower.

  He would need something to carry her in. He flashed back to the garage, talking with Eugene, the garden cart in the third bay. Perfect.

  The walk back to the drive passed in a blur. There were the trees, the still-green grass, the dead hydrangeas, and then he was standing in front of the garage, thankful, now, for van der Hoeven’s out-of-date, manually opened doors. He hauled up the far door. There it was, the garden cart, stored against the coming winter. Rectangular, with metal-bound wooden sides, it was big enough to hold a grown woman, if she curled up.

  He rolled it over the gravel, past the edge of the house, along the broad part of the trail. He could see the stone wall enclosing the back lawn and the mellow, peeled logs of the house’s rear facade. He was just swinging the cart onto the edge of the trail to the old camp when he heard it. The crunch of tires on gravel. He shoved the cart ahead hurriedly, only to stumble in its wake and nearly fall.

  A door slammed. He froze in place. He heard the sound of footsteps, gritting over the gravel, thumping on the wooden porch. There was a pause, as if the unseen visitor had rung the bell and was waiting.

  Shaun took a deep, silent breath.

  “Hello!” a voice called. “Anyone home?”

  1:20 P.M.

  Randy had his excuse for being on Fire Road 52 all ready. The Haudenosaunee entrance was marked only by stone pillars and was easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. He was on his way to pick up his wife. He was absentminded. He thought this was the road. Who could argue with that?

  Of course, he hoped there wouldn’t be anyone to argue with at all. He slowed as he approached the entrance to the logging road. No sign of any activity. He signaled, then turned in. Was she there? Undiscovered? Should he risk going on? He accelerated gently, rolling uphill. Just a guy out to pick up his wife. That’s all. He rounded a bend.

  He almost hit the red pickup parked in the middle of the road. He jammed on his brakes, the slight shuddering stop making his stomach swoop as if he were on a roller coaster. Past the truck, he could see—oh, shit—a cop car. No ambulance, no hearse, no sign of her. He didn’t see anybody. He worried his lip. Should he back out? Would that look more or less suspicious than getting out and taking a look-see? He sat in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by his options, until a man in hunter’s camos and a blaze-orange vest wrenched through the thicket of brush lining the road and walked toward him.

  A hunter. He started to smile in relief, until the man looked at Mike’s license plate. Looked at the tires. As he approached Randy, the man ambled wide of the car, in a path that might have been dictated by a rut in the dirt road but that also placed him in a position where he could see what was coming at him if Randy opened the door. He took off his cap, and that was when Randy saw it was the chief of police.

  Russ Van Alstyne smiled and motioned for him to crank down his window. The handle stuck at each rotation, and the resulting squeak of glass on rubber sounded like a chorus in Randy’s ears: You’re screwed, you’re screwed, you’re screwed.

  “Hey, son,” the chief said. “What’re you doing out here?”

  Randy blanked. What was he doing out here? He was . . . he was . . . “Looking for my wife,” he said.

  Van Alstyne’s blue eyes sharpened. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  Oh, shit. The chief thought he meant Becky Castle. Probably had him tagged as a wife beater. Randy shook his head. “She works up to Haudenosaunee. Cleans house for them. Our car’s in the shop, so I had to come get her.”

  “Cleans house for Eugene van der Hoeven? I think I met her this morning.” Van Alstyne stepped closer and peered into the window. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Mark Durkee’s brother-in-law, right? Schoof? Randy Schoof?”

  Randy nodded. If being Mark’s relation by marriage saved him, he would hug the self-righteous prick the next time he saw him.

  “So you’re looking for your wife, Randy?” The chief’s voice was relaxed, friendly. His eyes, however, were as bright as ever, his glance flickering from the backseat to the passenger side to the well beside the door to Randy’s clothes. “What’s that on your pants, there?”

  Randy looked at his lap. To his horror, a smear of blood stained his jeans. His mouth worked soundlessly, searching for some explanation. Why was there blood on his pants? He cut himself shaving? Jesus, that was ridiculous. He looked up at the chief, caught like a deer in the headlights. A deer. Mike’s deer. “I went hunting this morning. My friend took a buck. I helped him with it.” His relief at coming up with a good answer made his smile genuine. He gestured toward the chief’s hunting gear. “How did you do? Got yours yet?”

  Van Alstyne shook his head. “I have lousy luck.” He grinned. “But I’m persistent. So, you’re out here looking for your wife?”

  “At Haudenosaunee,” Randy repeated. “Isn’t this the road to the house?” He slapped at his jacket pockets, as if searching for a telltale crinkle of paper. “I have the directions written down here somewhere.”

  “Have you been out here before?”

  Randy froze. “Before?” Shit. If he told the chief he’d never been here before, he could easily get caught in the lie. His brother-in-law could tell them Randy used to work for Ed Castle.

  “Yeah. Were you and your friend hunting out here or anything?”

  Randy tried to sound relaxed. “Nope. Why?”

  “A couple hunters found a young woman on the road here. She’d been hurt real bad.”

  Hurt? Hurt? What did that mean? Randy stopped himself from blurting out You mean she isn’t dead? Instead, he pursed his lips in a look of concern and said, “I hope she’s all right.”

  “Maybe. She’s been taken to the hospital. She was in pretty bad shape. Unconscious. Internal injuries.”

  He wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t a murderer. He wanted to kiss the cop standing by his window. “That’s terrible,” he said, trying not to beam his relief.

  “It is. What makes it worse is that another young woman is missing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Millie van der Hoeven. I’m sure your wife will tell you all about it. The hunters who ran across this girl thought they had found Miss van der Hoeven, but now it seems she’s still out there somewhere.” The chief’s unshaven face settled into hard lines.

  Randy searched for something, anything, to say that would make him sound like an innocent bystander. “Uh . . . any idea where?”

  The chief shook his head. “No.” He pierced Randy with a look. “I think your wife must be around the same age as these two girls. Keep an eye on her. Don’t let her hang around outside on her own.”

  “I won’t.”

  “To get to Haudenosaunee, you want to get back on the county road and turn right. The road is about a mile up. It’s marked by two stone pillars.”

  Randy shifted the car into reverse. “Good luck in finding the missing girl!” He cranked the window up as he backed out of sight. The chief watched him the whole way.

  Randy cursed himself as he drove up the county road. He had to get Lisa, drop her off home, and talk to Mike Yablonski. He needed his friend to say that he picked Randy up after his bike got wrecked. Randy didn’t want Russ Van Alstyne even thinking about him in Becky Castle’s car. The man saw way too much for comfort. Christ, why had he insisted on taking the bike to Jimino’s? Frank Jimino would know it was his. If he had let it go to whatever the nearest garage was, he could, if he had to, abandon it. Now there was a clear trail: him to Ed Castle’s, then Becky taking responsibility for his bike.

  He was so distracted by his thoughts he nearly plowed into the black Mercedes at the top of the Haudenosaunee drive.

  “What the hell?” He parked his truck near the front door and got out. There was nobody in the car. He walked closer. Exc
ept for a fresh scratch on the passenger side, it was an exact duplicate of Shaun Reid’s car. He walked to the rear. Yep. There they were. Sierra Club and Adirondack Conservancy Corporation stickers. What the hell?

  He circled the Mercedes before heading toward the front porch. He climbed the steps and knocked on the door. No one answered. He knocked again. Then he opened the door and took a single step inside. “Hello? Anybody home?” he shouted. The echo of his own voice convinced him of what he had already felt. The house was deserted. He closed the door and wandered out onto the gravel drive. Where was his wife? Could van der Hoeven have given her a ride home? From what Lisa told him, her employer never left Haudenosaunee if he could help it. That was why—oh, hell. He slapped one hand over his face. Lisa had told Mr. van der Hoeven that Randy would deliver some boxes of wine for him. If van der Hoeven had to take Lisa home and make the delivery himself, Randy would never hear the end of it. Never.

  But if Lisa and van der Hoeven were gone, what was Shaun Reid doing here? Hiking by himself in the woods?

  “Hello,” Randy shouted, crossing the drive toward the back of the house. “Anyone home?” He listened as he walked to the head of a well-marked trail into the forest. “Is anybody here?”

  He heard nothing except the dry rustle of wind through dead leaves. The place gave him the creeps. The hell with it, he thought. His life had been unfolding like a bunch of horror movies today. He didn’t want to add The Blair Witch Project to the playlist.

  He made a beeline for the back door. Inside the kitchen, he was relieved to find two crates of wine stacked by the cellar door. He had thought it was supposed to be more—that was the whole point, that he could bring his pickup and take a bunch—but at this stage, he wasn’t arguing. He picked up both crates at once and walked back to his truck, staggering slightly under the load.

  He’d make the actual delivery later. Right now he would go to ground at Mike’s—hang out and help him cut up his deer and polish up his alibi. In the back of his head, the flip side of his not being a murderer loomed: Becky Castle, alive, could identify him. He didn’t know what to do about that. He didn’t even know how to think about it, other than by denial. He needed time. He needed a few minutes of normality in the midst of this crazy-ass day to catch his breath and get his feet under him. But he couldn’t take too much time. He thought of the deer waiting for him back at Mike’s. Just like him, that buck had been in the gunsights. And it had waited a fraction of a second too long before making its move. Now it was brisket and ground venison. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake.

  1:35 P.M.

  The name tag on the nurse across the admissions desk from Clare read HOLLI MURRAY, LPN, CMA, but it might as well have been HOLLI MURRAY, LPN, PIA for all the help she was. Pain in the ass, indeed, Clare thought, giving it one more try. “Just look her up. Millie van der Hoeven.”

  “I’ve told you already, ma’am, we don’t have any Millie van der Hoeven registered.”

  “I think her full first name is Millicent. Maybe they dropped part of her last name when she was admitted. Can you try Van Hoeven or just Hoeven?”

  “Ma’am, we don’t have her.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” Clare dropped her hands heavily on the admissions desk to avoid clutching at her hair. “Could you check and see if she was admitted at Glens Falls, then?”

  Holli Murray, LPN, CMA, gave Clare a condescending look. She was a tall, stick-thin woman, with peroxide-brittle hair and a heavy hand with makeup. She looked like she was auditioning for the run-down-and-tired “before” spot in an ad for iron supplements. “Ma’am,” she said, “are you a family member?”

  “No, but I’m a priest.”

  Murray’s overplucked eyebrows rose as she very visibly gave Clare the once-over, taking in her baggy, stained pants, her aged thermal shirt, and her hair, flattened by her hat and escaping in straggly pieces from the knot at the back of her head.

  “Really!” Clare protested. “I’m one of the hospital chaplains!”

  The Washington County Hospital was too small to have its own social worker, pathologist, and chaplain. The first two it shared with Glens Falls and the county medical examiner’s office. The latter post was filled on a rotating basis by Millers Kill’s Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian ministers—and by its Episcopal priest.

  “Uh-huh,” Holli Murray, LPN, CMA, said. “And I’m Clara Barton.”

  The elevator chimed, and Clare caught sight of a familiar face getting out. Alta Brewer, the senior emergency department nurse.

  “Alta!” Clare called. “Can you vouch for me?”

  “Hey, Reverend Fergusson.” The nurse switched directions, bearing down on the admissions desk. A head shorter than Clare, Alta was built like a miniature Humvee and had the same approach to obstacles in her way. She glanced up at Murray. “The reverend’s on the roster. Give her what she wants.”

  “But she was asking for confidential patient information,” Murray whined.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Alta bumped Murray away from the computer screen. “Go get yourself something to eat, will ya? Before you keel over and give us all more work to do.” She punched her password on the keyboard as Holli Murray, LPN, CMA, huffed away into the back office. “Fuggun’ stick women. Can’t stand ’em.” Alta glanced up at Clare. “Whatcha looking for, Reverend?”

  “Millie van der Hoeven. She should have come in on an ambulance within the last half hour. She had been injured up in the—”

  “I know who you’re talking about.” Alta keystroked furiously. “Holli couldn’t find her because she’s not Millie van der Hoeven.”

  “What?”

  “The cops went out to where she was found to have a look-see, and they got her purse. Her name’s Becky Castle.”

  Clare felt her jaw drop like a character’s in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

  “The name Millie van der Hoeven never even made it into the computer, because Chief Van Alstyne called with the update right after she arrived.”

  “I saw her today! Becky Castle! At Haudenosaunee!”

  Alta looked at her sharply. “Yeah?” She trundled around the desk and took Clare’s elbow. “Come with me. Holli!” she yelled toward the office. “Get back out here! You’re on duty!” She steered Clare toward the elevator.

  “Why am I coming with you?” Clare asked, as the elevator doors opened, then closed behind her.

  “The patient’s parents just got here. The mom asked for a minister.”

  “It’s Dr. Feely’s week.”

  “He hasn’t answered his page yet. You’re here.” The elevator chimed. Alta pushed her out onto the third floor.

  “But . . .” Clare plucked at her grubby clothes. Alta looked at her unsympathetically. “I thought I was meeting Eugene van der Hoeven. Millie’s brother. He’s already seen me like this.”

  “They asked for a minister, not a model.” She recaptured Clare’s elbow and led her to the surgery waiting room. “There they are. Go on.”

  “What’s going on with their daughter?” Clare hissed.

  “She’s in surgery now. Internal bleeding.” Alta gave her a little shove. “She’ll probably live,” she added, with the bluntness of a twenty-five-year veteran on the front lines.

  Clare instantly recognized Ed Castle from their earlier meeting, and she kicked herself for not putting the two names together. She kept forgetting one of the primary rules of Millers Kill: Any two people who share a last name are related in some degree.

  When Russ had introduced them, Ed Castle had been bundled up in a Day-Glo vest and camouflage jacket. Now he looked softer and infinitely more vulnerable in a flannel shirt and padded windcheater. Most of his hair was gone, and he had the pale line of a farmer’s tan high across his forehead. He was sitting with his head in his hands, and she could see his neck, cracked and lined from decades of exposure to the elements.

  The woman next to him was, like Ed, in her early sixties. Her pastel makeup was
marred by streaky shadows of mascara, and her mouth was wiped clean of lipstick. Despite her too-good-to-be-true blond hair, she looked old, stitched and seamed by a lifetime of hard work or the strain of the recent news.

  “Excuse me,” Clare said, her voice low. “Mr. Castle? I’m Clare Fergusson. We met this morning at Haudenosaunee. I was one of the team searching for Millie van der Hoeven.”

  He looked up at her blankly. “Oh,” he said. “The lady minister. Sorry, I didn’t recognize you.” He waved a hand at the woman sitting next to him. “This is my wife, Suzanne.”

  The woman’s good manners kicked in and she automatically smiled at Clare, as if she really were glad to meet her, here in the hospital where they waited on word of their daughter. When she isn’t ravaged by grief, Clare thought, she must have a soft, sweet face.

  “What did you say your name was, dear?”

  “Clare Fergusson. I’m the priest at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church. I understand you asked for a minister. Is there anything I can do to help you? Anyone I can call?”

  The older woman looked vaguely across the waiting room. “My younger grandson is already here. I let him go to the gift shop, poor thing. It’s hard for him to sit around waiting.”

  “Hard for me to listen to that damn Game Boy of his,” his grandfather grumbled.

  “Our other girl, Bonnie, is working up at the new hotel today. I’ve left a message there and on her answering machine at home. I’m sure as soon as she gets word, she’ll be here.” She smiled again, but the effort seemed too much for her, and the expression slid off her face into oblivion.